If it seems to some that this study has painted too rosy a picture of life in Tudor London that was not the intent. There is no question about whether the capital faced threats to prosperity and stability during the sixteenth century: it did. London, however, did not experience the enormous increase in social problems or the chronic instability which many historians believe were inevitable consequences of rising prices, demographic growth, and inequality. As we have seen, one explanation for this paradox – that is, apparent causes of hardship and instability without the expected results – is that the severity of London's problems has been exaggerated, their effects oversimplified. It is clear that Londoners experienced a long-term rise in prices, but it was not nearly as great as historians have suggested, nor was the decline in living standards as precipitous. At one-half of 1 per cent per year, the average rate of inflation throughout the bulk of the period was slight, a trend to which most people were able to adapt. Certainly there is no evidence that rising prices impoverished the majority of London's households. Unquestionably there was poverty in the capital, but the fact that estimates of the numbers of poor are relatively low, that most journeymen were able within a few years to accumulate the capital needed to set up shops, that more than two-thirds of all householders could pay taxes amounting to several weeks' income, suggests that most Londoners were not merely subsisting.